Today is Tuesday; 3rd of the Iranian month of Ordibehesht 1398 solar hijri; corresponding to 17^th of the Islamic month of Sha’ban 1440 lunar hijri; and April 23, 2019, of the Christian Gregorian Calendar.

2497 solar years ago, on this day in 478 BC, the Delian League was founded by Greek city-states, numbering between 150 to 173 under the leadership of Athens, whose purpose was to continue fighting the mighty Persian Empire after the freak victory in the Battle of Plataea at the end of the Second Persian invasion of Greece by the Iranian Achaemenid Emperor Xerxes, who due to resistance, decided to withdraw after conquering almost all of Greece and destroying Athens. The League's modern name derives from its official meeting place, the island of Delos, where congresses were held in the temple and where the treasury stood until Pericles moved it to Athens in 454 BC. Shortly after its inception, Athens began to use the League's navy for its own purposes. This behaviour frequently led to conflict between Athens and the less powerful members of the League. By 431 BC, Athens' heavy-handed control of the Delian League prompted the outbreak of the Peloponnesian War. The League was dissolved upon the war's conclusion in 404 BC.

1716 solar years ago, on this day in 303 AD, the devoted Palestinian-Syrian monotheist, Jirjis, known to the West as Saint George, attained martyrdom at the hands of the Roman Emperor Diocletian for refusing to worship the idols of the Roman pantheon. Almighty Allah had chosen Jirjis to preach monotheism in parts of Syria. He was noted for his bravery, and regarded Jesus as a Prophet of God, refusing to believe in the perverted concept of trinity forged by Paul the Jew, the founder of Christianity. Jirjis was also a firm believer in the coming of the last and greatest of divine messengers, Prophet Mohammad (SAWA), and has nothing to do with myths spun around him by the medieval Europeans. In some supplications to God Almighty, as bequeathed by the Imams of the Ahl al-Bayt, the name of Jirjis is mentioned. His shrine and the adjoining mosque near Mosul in Iraq was desecrated and blown through explosives by Takfiri terrorists, supported by the US, Saudi Arabia, the Zionist entity, and Turkey.

1082 lunar years ago, on this day in 358 AH, the Egyptian capital Fostat was conquered by the Fatemid Ismaili Shi’a Muslim general, Jowhar as-Saqali, ending the rule of the Ikhshid Turkic governors of the Abbasid caliphate of Baghdad. Jowhar, who was originally a Greek from the island of Sicily, off the coast of Italy, immediately started the construction of a new capital nearby in Egypt for the planned move of the Fatemid caliph, al-Mu’iz, from Mahdia in what is now Tunisia, the then capital of the Fatemid Empire, which at its peak extended from the northwest African coast of the Atlantic Ocean in present day Morocco to Syria and the Hijaz including the holy cities of Mecca, Medina, and Bayt ol-Moqaddas. It also included several islands in the Mediterranean Sea, especially Sicily. Jowhar named the new capital, "al-Qahera”, or the Victorious. He also built the al-Azhar Mosque and School in honour of the famous epithet "az-Zahra” of Hazrat Fatema Zahra (peace upon her) the Immaculate Daughter of Prophet Mohammad (blessings of God upon him and his progeny). Jowhar and the Fatemids restored the full form of the Azaan or call for the daily prayers, from the minarets of al-Azhar and other mosques, by bearing testimony to the vicegerency of Imam Ali (AS) after testimony to the mission of Prophet Mohammad (SAWA). The phrase "hayya ala khayr il-amal” which means "hasten to the best of deeds”, and which was dropped from the Azaan by the second caliph, was also revived. The Fatemids ruled Egypt for two centuries.

819 solar years ago, on this day in 1200 AD, Chinese philosopher Zhu Xi or Chu His, died at the age of 69. He lived during the Song dynasty as the most influential rationalist Neo-Confucian. His contributions to Chinese philosophy including his assigning special significance to the Analects, the Mencius, the Great Learning, and emphasis on the investigation of things that formed the basis of Chinese bureaucracy and government for over 700 years. He has been called the second most influential thinker in Chinese history, after Confucius. He termed Buddhist principles to be darkening and deluding the original mind as well as destroying human relations.

623 lunar years ago, on this day in 817 AH, Central Asian Turkic conqueror, Amir Timur died, while on an expedition against China, after conquering all the lands from the Mediterranean coast of Syria to River Ganges in India, and from the Persian Gulf in the south to Moscow in the north. He was of ferocious nature and at times destroyed entire cities and massacred whole populations, but at the same time patronized arts and literature, including the Persian language. He is buried in his capital Samarqand in what is now the Republic of Uzbekistan in a beautiful mausoleum called Gur-e Amir.

403 solar years ago, on this day in the year 1564 AD, the English poet, playwright, and author, William Shakespeare, died. He started his activities by acting and catapulted to fame in acting, and writing plays. He adopted the classical style and his works are mainly a blend of tragedies and comedies. His most important works include Hamlet, and Romeo and Juliet, although there are so many theories that the village-born Shakespeare was actually used a front man by certain aristocratic academicians for publication of their views and works, since political risks prevented them from disclosing their names. He died at the age of 52.

169 solar years ago, on this day in 1850 AD, English poet, William Wordsworth, died at the age of 80. He was a major English Romantic poet who, with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, helped to launch the Romantic Age in English literature with the 1798 joint publication of "Lyrical Ballads”. Wordsworth's magnum opus is generally considered to be "The Prelude”, a semi-autobiographical poem of his early years which he revised and expanded a number of times. It was posthumously titled and published, prior to which it was generally known as the poem "To Coleridge". Wordsworth was Britain's Poet Laureate from 1843 until his death seven years later.

161 solar years ago, on this day in 1858 AD, the physicist, mathematician, and presenter of Quantum Theory in Physics, Max Planck, was born in Germany. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1918, and was one of the staunch opponents of Nazi dictator, Adolf Hitler. He conducted extensive studies on theoretical physics, thermodynamics, heat, radiation and light, writing books in these fields. Planck's Quantum Theory revolutionized understanding of atomic and subatomic processes.

154 solar years ago, on this day in 1865 AD, Ali-Agha Shikhlinski, the Azeri general who was in the service of Russia, was born on April, 23 in the village of Kazakhly of Kazakh Uyezd in the Russian occupied parts of the Iranian land of Azarbaijan. He was descended from a noble Iranian family dating back to 1537 during the reign of Emperor Shah Tahmasb Safavi. His mother Shah Yemen Khanum was a grandchild of a famous poet Molla Vali Vidadi. After graduating from the Tiflis military academy he served as lieutenant-general of the Russian imperial army, and fought in the First World War. Earlier, during the Russo-Japanese War in 1905, as artillery commander, he distinguished himself during the siege of Port Arthur when, despite being severely wounded in his leg, he personally aimed the guns which had lost their gun crews and repulsed attacks of superior Japanese forces. Shikhlinski published a number of works on artillery, including the book titled "Use of Field Artillery in a Battle”, and invented an original target-finding device, which was called "Shiklinski Triangle”. After the October revolution by the communists, he resigned from his post and moved to Tiflis in Georgia, where he was charged with formation of the Muslim corps supported by the Ottoman Army of Islam in the Battle of Baku against the Soviet army. In January 1919, the government of Azerbaijan Democratic Republic appointed him a deputy defence minister. After the Red Army’s invasion of Azerbaijan and establishment of the Soviet regime, Shikhlinski was arrested 1922 and released two months later. He resigned from military service in 1929 and died in Baku in 1943 at the age of 78.

79 lunar years ago, on this day in 1361 AH, Gnostic Islamic scholar, Ayatollah Shaikh Hassan-Ali Nokhodaki Isfahani, passed away at the age of 82. He was a product of the famous Islamic seminary of holy Najaf in Iraq, and on completing his studies took up residence in holy Mashhad in northeastern Iran for the rest of his life. He was an expert in mathematics, astronomy, and medicine, but his fame is mainly due to his ethical virtues and spiritual powers, some of which have been cited in a book, compiled by his son.

39 solar years ago, on this day in 1979 AD, Sepahbod (General) Mohammad Vali Qarani was martyred at the age of 66 by the terrorist grouplet Forqan, within months of being appointed Chief of Staff of the Armed Forces. He joined the army during the days of the Pahlavi regime and earned steady promotion for his dedicated service to the country. He was, however, shocked by rampant corruption and immorality prevailing among the military. In 1957, he was accused of plotting a coup and was imprisoned. He was released, but again imprisoned in 1963 on charges of close contacts with the Father of the Islamic Revolution, Imam Khomeini (RA), during the 15th of Khordad (June 5, 1963) uprising. For the next 15 years he was in prison and was released on the eve of the victory of the Islamic Revolution. Following the establishment of the Islamic Republic he was appointed to the highest ranking military post, but was martyred in a few months by the enemies of Iran and Islam.

25 solar years ago, on this day in 1993 AD, Eritreans voted for independence from Ethiopia in a United Nations-monitored referendum. The capital is Asmara. Eritrea is bordered by Sudan in the west, Ethiopia in the south, and Djibouti in the southeast. The northeast and east of the country has an extensive coastline on the Red Sea, directly across from Saudi Arabia and Yemen. The Dahlak Archipelago and several of the Hanish Islands are part of Eritrea. Its size is approximately 117,600 km with an estimated population of 6 million, of whom more than 60 percent are Muslims. It was occupied by the British in the 19th century and then by the Italians, after whose defeat in World War 2, it was seized by Ethiopia. The people are Semitic and of the many languages spoken in Eritrea today, Tigrinya and Arabic are the two predominant languages for official purposes. English and Italian are also widely understood.

23 solar years ago, on this day in 1995 AD, the World Book and Copyright Day was initiated by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), to promote reading, publishing and copyright. The 23rd of April is the anniversary of the death of William Shakespeare and several other prominent authors.

21 solar years ago, on this day in 1997 AD, Ayatollah Mirza Ali Gharavi Alyari Tabrizi, passed away in his hometown Tabriz at the age of 96 and was laid to rest in the holy shrine of Hazrat Ma’soumah (peace upon her) in Qom. A product of the seminary of holy Najaf in Iraq, he attained ijtehad and was an expert in jurisprudence, ethics, theology, gnosis, and philosophy. On his return to Iran, he taught for 65 years at the Tabriz seminary and wrote several books, including a commentary in 15 volumes on "al-Orwat-al-Wosqa”.

8 solar years ago, on this day in 2010 AD, Takfiri terrorists backed by

Saudi Arabia, the US and Israel, carried out a series of bomb blasts in Baghdad, martyring 72 Shi’a Muslims, of whom 25 achieved martyrdom near the office of an Iraqi religious scholar strongly opposed to the US occupying forces. Two years earlier on this same date, Takfiri terrorists had martyred 88 Shi’a Muslims in Baghdad and Muqdadiya, including pilgrims from Iran.

7 solar years ago, on this day in 2011 AD, the repressive Aal-e Khalifa minority regime of the Persian Gulf island state of Bahrain, demolished 16 mosques and several hussainiyahs, over the past two months in a bid to crush the popular uprising of the long-suppressed Shi’a Muslim majority.

Ordibehesht 3rd is marked in Iran as National Day for the celebrated Islamic scholar and scientist of the Safavid era, Baha od-Din Mohammad al-Ameli, popularly known as Sheikh Baha’i. Born in Ba’lbak in the Jabal Amel region of what is now Lebanon, he came to Iran as a child with his father and grew into an expert in jurisprudence, theology, hadith, and Arabic and Persian literature, as well as astronomy, medicine, mathematics, and architecture. He was appointed Sheikh ol-Islam by Shah Abbas the Great and besides writing over a hundred books and treatises on various topics, he designed the famous Naqsh-e Jahan Square and the Grand Shah Abbas Mosque of Isfahan (Imam Mosque). His treatise on mathematics was in use as a textbook until the end of the 19th century. He was among the teachers of the famous philosopher, Mullah Sadra. Sheikh Baha’i passed away at the age of 77 in Isfahan, and according to his will, his body was taken to Mashhad and buried in the premises of the holy shrine of Imam Reza (AS), the 8th Infallible Heir of Prophet Mohammad (SAWA).

(Courtesy: IRIB English Radio – http://parstoday.com./en)